A Dark Hour
by Prince-Malice
Summary: New York had seen better days. So had Steve Rogers.


New York had seen better days.

When the first war (however brief) between human and alien had ended, left in it's wake had been nothing but wreckage, injury, and loss.

The death toll was high and the hospitals full. Watching the masses flood the streets in absolute, mourning silence, I saw not the citizens of New York, but the hopeless victims of the war that was both so recent yet so long ago.

I had to close my eyes. The sight of despair weighed heavily in my heart and I thought to myself with bitterness, what hope had anyone if Captain America could not bare to look upon the wreckage?

It was gut-wrenching and I, Steve Rogers, had never felt smaller in my life; had never known how big the universe truly was.

"It's amazing isn't it?"

I let my eyes peel themselves open to see Tony Stark. He had sidled beside me and looked down on the people that marched through the rubble. And though he was looking down, he did not _look down_ on them. A certain admiration glittered in the wells of his eyes and it stiffened my shoulders to see such humanity after the things that had transpired between us.

"Did you think think they would be like lost sheep?" I bit.

It pained me greatly, yet I had never found it so easy to lash out at anyone before. Since the first time I ever met Tony Stark, each spiteful thought I'd repressed since waking from the ice boiled and burst.

Tony Stark had many attributes I found easy to dislike, but an equal many were more than admirable.

We were tired and the day was long, perhaps Tony had no energy left to lash out at me and when it occurred to me that he would not be contributing an angry and shallow blow, I felt all the more wretched with myself.

I feared that the damage I had done to us, like the city, was irreparable.

The silence gave way to a buzz and then eventually a cheer. People hugged and clutched each other and tears of happiness drenched the uprooted streets. They picked themselves up. They did not need Captain America or Iron Man or Nick Fury to tell them that they would be okay.

I had been raised to do nothing worth being ashamed of. How my mother would be saddened to see how hopeless I felt amidst the joy of the survivors. She would shake her head at the manor in which I struck out at the man who did not hesitate to offer his life to these people, how with words I stabbed at his tender underbelly and left him wounded before the battle had even begun.

And they call me a Captain.

Had I changed so much so quickly? Could seventy short years leave me so bitter with misery starved for company?

"Their homes are gone, their jobs... They have to start over."

I wouldn't wish such a fate on anyone. With no one to turn to, no one who knows your face from anything but old video footage, the world is a stranger and there is no sense of familiarity to clutch to.

Tony smiled although the shine never reached his eyes.

"Yeah, well, we can't all have a fresh start."

"Having everything forced from you is not a fresh start anyone should want."

"That isn't what I meant, Cap."

We stood side by side with a tension that felt smothering; like air was a distant concept.

Tony had stripped himself of his suit and stood with weak shoulders. He looked like he could be any one of the wandering people below, not like someone who had kissed death and saved pretty much all of their asses, even his own.

So why could I not just force myself to say 'Thank you, good job.' and shake on it?

I heaved, body aching in a way I hadn't experienced since long before my transformation, after being beaten down ruthlessly in every alley in Brooklyn. Not even a super soldier was built to do what I had been doing... what all of us, the Avengers initiative, had been doing.

Not Tony, who was as human as anyone, crammed in that suit and tossed into the dark and very cold recesses of space.

Who was seconds away from being left there. Alone.

"What happened back there..." I began, unsure and uncomfortable. "We couldn't wait."

I was silenced by a jerk of Tony's hand, raised, exposed, very human. Each finger riddled with trembles.

"You made a call."

I watched him. Watched how he seemed to have aged years in a single, sunny afternoon.

"I had to."

Tony Stark, intelligent, courageous, determined... He looked like a shell of the man from before that looked me in the eye as if he had a foot over me and not the other way around.

I hated that day for many reasons. I'd exposed sides of myself that were more than unreasonable, fought my way through an army of Chitauri, watched New York crumble at the knees, and almost ensured the death of a man who I was supposed to call comrade.

"I know. What you did was for them." Tony gestured down where news reporters fought each other for coverage. Where people threw themselves in front of the cameras for a chance to praise their heroes and have the whole world hear them do it. "I'm not going to accuse you of trying to have personal involvement in my demise."

The joke was sour on his lips and the guilt from before struck in another wave.

"You would have done the same thing if it were me."

I muttered. Of course he would have. Tony had not attempted whatsoever to disguise the light in which he viewed me (to those that haven't caught on, it's a very dim, flickering, excuse). Had I been the one up there, had Tony closed the portal... Well, no loss on his part. He would go home, have sex with some woman, probably bathe in his money, then sleep without so much as a stir.

Because that is something a genius-billionaire-playboy-philanthropist would do.

I tried to remind myself of this when Tony met my eyes with far more fight in them than not moments before. I feared another confrontation was inevitable, though I couldn't imagine why.

I hadn't the energy to fight with him.

"No. I wouldn't have."

Tony stated without so much as a rough inflection.

"I would have waited."

The sinking feeling inside me was worse than the state of the city. These horrible feelings that had been present since I woke were unable to be pushed back any longer... not with Tony Stark.

He had a way of knowing just what to say to make me absolutely hate myself.

So when Tony began to walk away, I was certain that any chance of us having a real team walked away with him.

"But that's why you're the Captain."

Alone now in the wreckage, I watched the people. I watched them pick themselves up. I watched the beginnings of the reconstruction.

Then Tony came into sight. Shrugging off reporters, he went to where a group of people were clearing a path.

Tony Stark, without his suit, without his title, with nothing but the Arc Reactor glowing in his chest, began to help.

I knew then that yes, my relationship with the man was about as blighted as it could be.

But if the average people would rebuild New York, then as Captain America, I would build something with Tony Stark.

It wouldn't be easy.

It would take time and endless efforts.

Maybe then I could find the part of myself I had left behind, the part that would never do anything worth being ashamed of.


End file.
